[Punky]

Hey guys,

I'm trying to fix my friend's Zen Xtra. It won't boot up properly, and freezes at the EAX screen. She let it sit for a while with the battery dead and I wonder if that might have caused it. She's got it plugged in now, and I went to the troubleshooting menu. I tried to do a Clean Up (which is basically a disk defrag) and it just hung on that screen for like an hour. From there I reset it again, and went to the same menu and tried formatting it. That was a two hours ago, and it's still going. I think something's seriously wrong.

The player is getting warm (though not absurdly hot) but I'm not hearing the HD doing anything. Is this player dead?

 

[Drpepper]

I think it might be time for a new hard drive.

 

[Punky]

Damn. Anyone else got any feedback?

 

[foreverfi]

how many files do you loaded in the memory? try not fill in 90% of it's capacity.

and how larger each filesf folder? try not too larger each folder. less then 1G would be better.

Please don't change the albume name when compile the files.

clean the virus bY PC.

above experience can halp. please feedback. thank you.

 

[Punky]

There are no large files on there at all. Just small MP3s, and it's barely half full.

 

[oskar]

It does sound like a hard drive problem.

The good news is any 2.5" IDE drive will work, so you can test that theory with an old laptop drive you may have lying around.

If you get a new drive, don't bother going over 120GB (unless you want to use uncompressed wavs) as the player's db system has a limit of ~10K files.

Replacement batteries are also cheap (<$10) and plentiful on ebay.

Good luck.

 

[Punky]

Can you link me to instructions on how to do this?

 

[Drpepper]

I don't know where the instructions are now, but it really is quite simple. Open up the player, 4 screws hold the drive in from the bottom, disconnect ribbon cable and install new drive doing the above in reverse. Make sure you have the current firmware from Creative. Boot up the player in recovery mode, I don't remember the sequence you can find that @Creative also, and install the firmware.
I've done it myself on several Nomads. After you're done, you'll say that was too easy.

 

[Punky]

Huh. No kidding. What kind of connector does the HD need to have?

 

[Drpepper]

Just a laptop hard drive ribbon cable.

 

[Punky]

Sounds pretty standard. So, since the firmware can't accommodate more than 10,000 files or so, would it be overkill to buy an 80 gig HD? I'm looking on newegg and there really aren't any drives any smaller than that. If you can recommend a place, let me know.

EDIT: Nevermind, just saw above post. 120 gigs should be stock standard then. That's easy to get.

You guys rock, thanks. My friend (my ex actually, haha) doesn't want me to do this, but since it's bricked without a replacement HD, and I like projects, I may try to make this thing pretty uber, with a 120 gig HD.

 

[Drpepper]

The guide I used was on the now deceased nomadness.net, but here's a few I googled that will get you going:

Upgrading your Creative Zen Xtra's hard drive. - AOA

HOW TO: Replace Creative Zen Xtra hard drive

120GB is the way to go, any more is useless.
Good luck!

 

[jpelg]

Just make sure that the laptop drive you get has an IDE connector. I don't think that newer SATA drives work.

I have a 160g HD in mine, which gives me the maximum 130g of usable space (b/c of the Xtra's firmware limitation). I use 320k mp3's, so I can use that extra ten gigs of space.

However, I would be interested in substituting a 64 or 128g flash drive instead if prices ever come down.

 

[Punky]

Interesting. I may do this if my friend is down to pay for the HD. She's not technically inclined, so I'd probably have to do it for her.

 

[Punky]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpelg /img/forum/go_quote.gif Just make sure that the laptop drive you get has an IDE connector. I don't think that newer SATA drives work. I have a 160g HD in mine, which gives me the maximum 130g of usable space (b/c of the Xtra's firmware limitation). I use 320k mp3's, so I can use that extra ten gigs of space. However, I would be interested in substituting a 64 or 128g flash drive instead if prices ever come down.

Do you know if the speed of the drive matters? I'm seeing IDE drives with 4200 and 5400 RPM drive speeds. Given the age of the player, I'm guessing that I should go with the slower drive?

Justin